Monthly Archives: October 2015

There will be woodland fun for all the family at Worth Park on Friday 30th October from 11.00am – 3.00pm. There will be woodland arts and crafts, bat box making, a woodland challenge to complete, spring bulb planting and a guided tree walk.

Thanks to a partnership with Pound Hill Family Centre we will also be able to offer special activities for under fives including a baby area, scavenger hunt, collage and treasure basket making and a story.

The event is free and there is no need to book. Bulb planting will be at 11.00am and bat box making at 12.00pm. Please note that we are only making 10 bat boxes for the park so please come early if you would like to make one of these with your family.

Any questions please get in touch. If you are receiving this email because you are the lead contact for an organisation then please pass on this message to anyone who you think may be interested. see poster below.

Rough sleepers have raised more than £7,500 for a Crawley homeless shelter.

More than 40 people including a group from St Wilfrid’s School took part in the Big Sleep Out in Queens Square in aid of Crawley Open House on Thursday (October 15).

The charity’s chairman Chris Oxlade, who took part in the event, which ran from 7pm to 7am, said more than 7500 had been raised.

He said: “It was a great night for raising the profile of homelessness and raising some money as well.

“It’s a tough thing to do but we all get to go back to a warm bed and a place lo live but last year Crawley Open House turned away the best part of 2,000 people.

“Anyone can be homeless in a blink of an eye, there’s not a certain stereotype that the homeless are like at all.”

Speaking of his experience, he said: “When you’re lying there – and most homeless people don’t sleep in groups – if somebody is walking past or somebody is shouting in the town centre you do wake up with a jump because there’s that sort of fear factor, let alone the cold and little things like going to the toilet – all those things you take for granted.

“When you get up it’s quite a sobering experience because you kind of get a glimpse of what it’s like to sleep on the streets because some people just totally ignore you like you’re not there, others give you a look, others give you a smile.”

The shelter in Stephenson Way Three Bridges, has 24 beds.

Mr Oxlade said the funds raised would go towards the shelter’s help for the homeless and its community outreach in times of financial uncertainty’.

The previous Sleep Out in 2012 raised some 3,000 and had around 30 participants.

Mr Oxlade said the event could be repeated in 2016 following this year’s success.

It marked a milestone in the multi-billion pound Government Thameslink Programme which is due to create rail links from Three Bridges to Bedfordshire and Kent by 2018.

A spokesman for the Department of Transport said the depot would play a significant part in housing and maintaining the new 1,140 carriage fleet for the expanded Thameslink network.

It will operate from Bedford, Cambridge and Peterborough to Brighton, Horsham, Gatwick, Maidstone and Sevenoaks.

Crawley MP Henry Smith said: “Crawley commuters, and people travelling to work from across the south east, can expect a step change in capacity as a result of the new fleet of Class 700 trains.

‘At the end of 2018, trains will run in and out of London every two to three minute so providing a service of up to 24 trains an hour during peak times.

“I’m delighted that as a result of Siemens’ 300 million investment, there will be an estimated 150 jobs based at the site. I’m also pleased that over the course of the next year, 26 apprentices will be based at the new depot.”

He added: “I’m pleased that Siemens, Govia Thameslink Railway and Network Rail chose to locate their new facility at Three Bridges in Crawley, building on the area’s considerable rail heritage.

“It was a pleasure to show the Transport Secretary around the site.” Mr Mcloughlin said: “The opening of this state-of-the-art facility is a major milestone and paves the way for an impressive new fleet of hi-tech trains to come into service from spring next year.

Its final report had stated: “Although an expanded Gatwick would see more people affected by noise than today, its overall noise impacts would still be much less significant than those around Heathrow.”

Sir Howard said the commission’strongly believes’ its arguments behind its recommendations in its final report were stronger than GAL’s criticisms.

The Government will decide which airport to expand.

The letter stated: “The majority of the points made by GAL in the media were in reality also made to the commission in the course of its work and we considered them carefully before we reached our conclusions.

“I thought it may therefore be helpful to provide an overview of this and to explain why we believe strongly that our work is robust to these criticisms.”

He refuted GAL’s arguments over air quality issues around Heathrow. His letter stated: “Our analysis demonstrates, however, that the impacts of expansion at Heathrow would be a manageable part of this broader issue which we believe the Government can feasibly devise and implement appropriate measures to address.

In our view, therefore, limited weight should be placed on the suggestions that air quality represents a significant obstacle to expansion.”

The letter cited the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and an academic backing the commission’s traffic forecasting method over GAL’s. The commission’strongly disagreed’ with GAL’s claims passenger growth at the airports forecasts were wrong.

He refuted GAL’s assertion that the economic benefits from expanding either airport were ‘virtually the same’ and stated a third runway at Heathrow was predicted to have around two-thirds as much net social benefit to the UK.

His letter stated: “This overall analysis aligned well with the PWC results, which showed much stronger impacts across the UK economy from expansion at Heathrow – more than £140 billion over 60 years compared to c. £90 with a second runway at Gatwick.”